All Things 2021 NCAA College Basketball March Madness Tournament Thread

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I had the same experience howeda did on a long day of tournament watching. Flipped back from the OT of Va Tech vs Florida to see the worst parts of the Utah State game. Came back to Cleveland State after half time and saw them get blown out. Finished it up with seeing San Diego State go scoreless for like the last 9 minutes of the first half and didn't do much better in the second.

When I saw the bracket, I did think both SDSU and Utah State got rough draws for their particular styles of play. Unfortunately that was proven correct.

Utah State vs Texas Tech: I was alarmed at just how outclassed the Utah State guards were in this game. For Craig Smith particularly, this was another game where it was abundantly clear how much Queta meant to their defense (I believe top 15 if not top 10 in KenPom). He's not always going to have a guy that talented at center, so will that defense stay elite? It's a small concern for someone who has been fantastic in February and March, but both his tournament appearances have now been ugly (lost an 8/9 game to Washington 78-61 previously...maybe that Boeheim zone is just MWC Kryptonite?).

Cleveland State vs Houston: Fairly competitive outing from Gates's guys for most of the first half, but that was with one of Houston's starting guards going out with an injury and his backup then leaving with 2 fouls. When you take in to account that Houston has a loss to East Carolina on their resume, I was hoping to see Cleveland State make this more of a game than it was. This just kind of showed where the Horizon League is in the hierarchy of college basketball conferences.

San Diego State vs Syracuse: One thing I noticed here was that San Diego State was trying to defeat the zone in the first half by getting it to Mitchell at/near the free throw line. The problem was Mitchell just wasnt big enough to score from their or see passing lanes due to Syracuse length. Not having a talented big was an issue here. The second issue was the 3 point shooting and unlike many of Minnesota's games, these were guys SDSU would normally be pretty happy shooting the ball: Mitchell a 36% 3 point shooter was 1-9 and Gomez a 42% 3 point shooter was 1-7. When you are playing a bigger/longer team from a power 5 conference that's playing zone against your mid major team, it's a tough ask to be competitive with those numbers. Like Smith, Dutcher is now 0-2 in the tournament (losing as an 11 67-65 to 6 Houston previously)

Other potential candidates:

Arkansas vs Colgate- This was one of the more fun watches of the day, especially in the first half. Musselman's team came out tight or just slopply, but they really turned it on later.

Loyola vs Georgia Tech- So Moser is the only one of the realistic (according to GH consensus) candidates to advance. This kind of shows why we shouldn't put too much stock in to one tournament or one tournament game. Loyola drew Georgia Tech who was playing without ACC player of the year Moses Wright who would have made an enormous difference in this game. Unlike San Diego State, Loyola's shooters came through for them. It's not very hard to see a scenario where Utah State or San Diego State draws Georgia Tech (or say a team like Tennessee who didn't show up today) and maybe they get a win and Loyola meets the flame thrower that was Syracuse tonight and they go home instead. That said, it was easy to be impressed by Moser's group as they executed well on both ends of the floor (especially down the stretch) to pull away late.
 

EG#9 said:
I had the same experience howeda did on a long day of tournament watching. Flipped back from the OT of Va Tech vs Florida to see the worst parts of the Utah State game. Came back to Cleveland State after half time and saw them get blown out. Finished it up with seeing San Diego State go scoreless for like the last 9 minutes of the first half and didn't do much better in the second.

When I saw the bracket, I did think both SDSU and Utah State got rough draws for their particular styles of play. Unfortunately that was proven correct.

Utah State vs Texas Tech: I was alarmed at just how outclassed the Utah State guards were in this game. For Craig Smith particularly, this was another game where it was abundantly clear how much Queta meant to their defense (I believe top 15 if not top 10 in KenPom). He's not always going to have a guy that talented at center, so will that defense stay elite? It's a small concern for someone who has been fantastic in February and March, but both his tournament appearances have now been ugly (lost an 8/9 game to Washington 78-61 previously...maybe that Boeheim zone is just MWC Kryptonite?).

Cleveland State vs Houston: Fairly competitive outing from Gates's guys for most of the first half, but that was with one of Houston's starting guards going out with an injury and his backup then leaving with 2 fouls. When you take in to account that Houston has a loss to East Carolina on their resume, I was hoping to see Cleveland State make this more of a game than it was. This just kind of showed where the Horizon League is in the hierarchy of college basketball conferences.

San Diego State vs Syracuse: One thing I noticed here was that San Diego State was trying to defeat the zone in the first half by getting it to Mitchell at/near the free throw line. The problem was Mitchell just wasnt big enough to score from their or see passing lanes due to Syracuse length. Not having a talented big was an issue here. The second issue was the 3 point shooting and unlike many of Minnesota's games, these were guys SDSU would normally be pretty happy shooting the ball: Mitchell a 36% 3 point shooter was 1-9 and Gomez a 42% 3 point shooter was 1-7. When you are playing a bigger/longer team from a power 5 conference that's playing zone against your mid major team, it's a tough ask to be competitive with those numbers. Like Smith, Dutcher is now 0-2 in the tournament (losing as an 11 67-65 to 6 Houston previously)

Other potential candidates:

Arkansas vs Colgate- This was one of the more fun watches of the day, especially in the first half. Musselman's team came out tight or just slopply, but they really turned it on later.

Loyola vs Georgia Tech- So Moser is the only one of the realistic (according to GH consensus) candidates to advance. This kind of shows why we shouldn't put too much stock in to one tournament or one tournament game. Loyola drew Georgia Tech who was playing without ACC player of the year Moses Wright who would have made an enormous difference in this game. Unlike San Diego State, Loyola's shooters came through for them. It's not very hard to see a scenario where Utah State or San Diego State draws Georgia Tech (or say a team like Tennessee who didn't show up today) and maybe they get a win and Loyola meets the flame thrower that was Syracuse tonight and they go home instead. That said, it was easy to be impressed by Moser's group as they executed well on both ends of the floor (especially down the stretch) to pull away late.
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Nice breakdown and takeaways. It was disappointing not to see SDSU break down that zone in the middle with Mitchell but easier said than done. Tough night for him. Thought he coulda got his midrange going off the bounce but ‘cuse is very long. Still love Dutcher coached teams as I’ve probably overstated on GH.

Utah St. just so limited athletically going up against a team like TT. They hung in there for a while but didn’t have enough. Love Queta but talent level is a significant concern with a potential Smith to Minnesota move here.

Moser has his squad humming but agreed it’s tough on GT without POY.

I have no idea if Muss attainable but they kicked it in gear nicely like you said.

Gates just such a wild card to me.
 

skiumah1 said:
Nice breakdown and takeaways. It was disappointing not to see SDSU break down that zone in the middle with Mitchell but easier said than done. Tough night for him. Thought he coulda got his midrange going off the bounce but ‘cuse is very long. Still love Dutcher coached teams as I’ve probably overstated on GH.

Utah St. just so limited athletically going up against a team like TT. They hung in there for a while but didn’t have enough. Love Queta but talent level is a significant concern with a potential Smith to Minnesota move here.

Moser has his squad humming but agreed it’s tough on GT without POY.

I have no idea if Muss attainable but they kicked it in gear nicely like you said.

Gates just such a wild card to me.
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Completey agree with all your takes here. Dutcher's teams are tough and play hard and are now something like 50-7 over the past two years. I just looked it up and Boeheim had a run to the Final Four as a 9-9 ACC team that was a #10 seed in the 15-16 tournament. That zone has given people problems in the tournament for years, so I can't be too hard on Dutcher for that performance tonight.

Craig Smith just wins wherever he goes, but that limited athleticism really showed up (and Queta might have been the best athlete on the floor) in this game against Tech. The recruiting piece is the big question for me. I think we had a post on this board from an Aggie fan that stated there's still a large number of guys playing for Smith that aren't his recruits. With the LDS missions and stuff it's really hard to keep track of who recruited who (though I know Queta was a Smith recruit for sure). I think Smith has a high floor, but the ceiling is the question.

Gates is the wilcard. He's the only one where I worry that Pitino like results are possible due to coming in as the youngest coach in the B1G and only having more head coaching experience than the new Penn State coach Shrewsberry. I also think it's possible he's a great coach that we'd feel like we missed out on if he ends up elsewhere.
 





EG#9 said:
Gates is the wilcard. He's the only one where I worry that Pitino like results are possible due to coming in as the youngest coach in the B1G and only having more head coaching experience than the new Penn State coach Shrewsberry. I also think it's possible he's a great coach that we'd feel like we missed out on if he ends up elsewhere.
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If we hire him, he’ll be Pitino 2.0.

If we don’t hire him, he’ll do great things somewhere else and people will be angry and bitter that we didn’t hire him.

That’s how that works.
 





skiumah1 said:
Nice breakdown and takeaways. It was disappointing not to see SDSU break down that zone in the middle with Mitchell but easier said than done. Tough night for him. Thought he coulda got his midrange going off the bounce but ‘cuse is very long. Still love Dutcher coached teams as I’ve probably overstated on GH.

Utah St. just so limited athletically going up against a team like TT. They hung in there for a while but didn’t have enough. Love Queta but talent level is a significant concern with a potential Smith to Minnesota move here.

Moser has his squad humming but agreed it’s tough on GT without POY.

I have no idea if Muss attainable but they kicked it in gear nicely like you said.

Gates just such a wild card to me.
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Why is talent level a concern?
Recruits at Utah state are different than here. Hopefully.
 





skiumah1 said:
Right that would be the hope.
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If that’s your concern with him then it should be with nearly every coach we could hire. The gophers should out recruit mid majors. Pitino certainly did and he struggled here. To think a talent level a coach has at a school is indicative of what they would get here is asinine.
 



UpAndUnder43 said:
If that’s your concern with him then it should be with nearly every coach we could hire. The gophers should out recruit mid majors. Pitino certainly did and he struggled here. To think a talent level a coach has at a school is indicative of what they would get here is asinine.
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I'd be willing to bet Dutcher brings in better talent than Smith. Both can coach. So I will take Dutcher.

Smith just seems like a higher floor lower ceiling. Once again all it is is making predictions based on past performance. Dutcher has had the higher ceiling with better talent. I get it SDSU easier to get recruits than Utah St and he inherited the program so probably easier for him.

Still I'll take the higher past performance.
 
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GopherWeatherGuy said:
This is a hell of a story

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I watched a few minutes of them in their conference tournament championship. They're enjoyable to watch on the offensive end that's for sure. They're a team I thought could pull off and upset but they do have a traditionally tough matchup. Of course, Virginia is the only #1 who has lost to a #16 so there's that too.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Why is talent level a concern?
Recruits at Utah state are different than here. Hopefully.
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Yes, almost any mid-major who takes this job automatically should have access to an improved talent pool just by virtue of the conference, much greater media exposure, greater recruiting resources, and excellent facilities. That might not happen immediately because of the current environment but over time that coach should have interest from higher level recruits than he had at his former job.
 


cjbfbp said:
I watched a few minutes of them in their conference tournament championship. They're enjoyable to watch on the offensive end that's for sure. They're a team I thought could pull off and upset but they do have a traditionally tough matchup. Of course, Virginia is the only #1 who has lost to a #16 so there's that too.
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UVA also been shut down for a week and do they have all their players? Both factors against them. Not saying they'll lose but I think its a close game.
 


UpAndUnder43 said:
UVA also been shut down for a week and do they have all their players? Both factors against them. Not saying they'll lose but I think its a close game.
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I will certainly enjoy an Ohio upset!
 





UpAndUnder43 said:
If that’s your concern with him then it should be with nearly every coach we could hire. The gophers should out recruit mid majors. Pitino certainly did and he struggled here. To think a talent level a coach has at a school is indicative of what they would get here is asinine.
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One of the more fair critiques I’ve seen is that Gates, with his extended stint at Florida State, has experience recruiting at the high major level that Smith doesn’t have. Smith was an assistant for Tim Miles for two years at Nebraska, and otherwise he’s coached at lower levels. I agree that a coach should have access to higher level recruits at Minnesota than Utah State. Maybe there’s a concern that Smith would be just okay at recruiting, and not good enough to move us into the upper half of the Big Ten. Maybe the concern is that, without a strong first 2-3 seasons on the court to sell to recruits, you get stuck in the middle to bottom of the Big Ten, and a potential Tubby scenario where your best years are about .500 in the Big Ten and an 8 seed in the tournament.
 

cjbfbp said:
I watched a few minutes of them in their conference tournament championship. They're enjoyable to watch on the offensive end that's for sure. They're a team I thought could pull off and upset but they do have a traditionally tough matchup. Of course, Virginia is the only #1 who has lost to a #16 so there's that too.
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I have Ohio beating UVA as tall guards cause them real trouble and with Covid protocol UVA has practiced once. Of course UVA rocked another ACC title and even in a down year in the ACC that 5th title is extraordinary. Two empty recruiting classes did not derail another conference title. I missed the Oral Roberts pick but my two grandsons got it.
 

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